CELEBRITY CONSTELLATION – Man Overboard January 29, 2014

Sadly, one of the crew of 964-foot cruise ship CELEBRITY CONSTELLATION went overboard in the Caribbean Sea near the Yukatan Channel at around 2:30 a.m. yesterday. His absence was not discovered or investigated until after 10:30 a.m. During those eight hours, CELEBRITY CONSTELLATION continued her route from Cozumel, Mexico, toward Port Everglades, Florida.

Apparently, closed-circuit cameras were reviewed only after a pair of shoes was discovered next to a deck railing; the video footage revealed a person going overboard. The ship crew were then able to calculate where this unfortunate incident occurred and alert the U.S. Coast Guard in Florida. The Coast Guard began a search, but they have not located the man.

The man has been identified as Inyoman Bagiada, 45, from Indosesia. He was working as a cook on board.

Person-overboards on cruise ships are not uncommon. Roughly there is one overboard per month somewhere in the world. (Since December, this is the fifth overboard reported from a cruise ship.) Because person-overboards are not rare, there has been much discussion recently about fitting cruise ships with higher rails and with sensors in hopes of a much quicker response when someone goes over. The higher rails have already been fit to some cruise ships, but there is the argument that not all of the sensor technology that has been developed so far would fit every type of ship. There is also concern that with sensors there would be too great a number of false alarms. The issue of sensors will probably continue to be up for debate while various solutions are considered.

In the meantime, our thoughts and prayers to out to all those affected by these tragedies.